Self Help Radio 020817: Valentine's Day 2017 - Sweethearts

(I found this image here.)

First off, I can't apologize enough for this Valentine's Show being almost a week early.  The show is on Wednesday; Valentine's Day is on a Tuesday this year.  It couldn't be helped.  But now the flowers will be wilted & the chocolates all eaten way before the actual day!

Still, if the show helps you find a sweetheart - or makes your current sweetheart appreciate you more - than it will have done its job.  Or if you like the music.  Or if you enjoyed the ridiculous interviews with my spiritual mentor, or the "love guru," or the two guys who started the first online dating site who seem to have had wildly different experiences.  Basically, I'm saying I hope you liked the show.  That's when it will have done its job.

Anyway.  The show will be there for you now till Valentine's Day (& probably a long while after that) at Self Help Radio dot net.  Like most sexy things, it requires a username & a password to access the site, but unlike most sexy things, they're easy to find - they're right there on the web page!  & the songs that I play in each of the hours are listed below.

Happy Valentine's Day!  You sweetheart you.

(part one)

"Let Me Call You Sweetheart" Bing Crosby with Georgie Stoll & His Orchestra _Here Lies Love_
"Sweetheart" Tiger Trap _Sour Grass EP_
"If You & I Could Be Sweethearts" The Varieteers _Night Train To Nashville_

"Sweetheart Darling" Rose Batiste _Ladies Of Detroit Sound, Vol. 1_
"Sweetheart" Suicide _Suicide_
"Say Something Sweet To Your Sweetheart" Jo Stafford & Gordon Macrae _Down Memory Lane_
"My Sweetheart Left Me Behind" The DeCastro Sisters _Teach Me Tonight_

"Sweethearts On Parade" Lillie Delk Christian _Louis Armstrong & The Blues Singers_
"Careless Sweetheart" Cindy Walker _The Swingin' Cowgirl From Texas_
"Sweetheart Waltz" Sally Timms _Cowboy Sally's Twilight Laments For Lost Buckaroos_
"Sweetheart" Kaia _Oregon_
"I'd Rather Be An Old Man's Sweetheart (Than A Young Man's Fool)" Candi Staton _Sweet & Raw Soul Music_

"Sweetheart Like You" Bob Dylan _Infidels_

(part two)

"Childhood Sweetheart" Junior Murvin _Police & Thieves_
"Keep Me In Mind, Sweetheart" Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan _Sunday At Devil Dirt_
"You Are My Sweetheart" The Bobbettes _This Is The Night: The End Records Story_

"Radio Sweetheart" Elvis Costello _Taking Liberties_
"I Want To Be A Cowboy's Sweetheart" Rosalie Allen _The Hillbilly Yodel Star Of The 1940s_
"Sweetheart" The Wave Pictures _Susan Rode The Cyclone_
"Sweethearts" Shirley & Lee _Let The Good Times Roll_

"Sweetheart" Lloyd Cole _Lloyd Cole_
"Oh, Sweetheart" Shout Out Louds _Howl Howl Gaff Gaff_
"Secret Little Sweetheart" Standard Fare _The Noyelle Beat_
"Hey Sweetheart" Nightmare Of You _Infomaniac_
"Sweetheart Rose Special" The Corn Dollies _The Corn Dollies_

"Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight" The Spaniels _Hits Of The Spaniels_

Whither Sweethearts?

(I can't remember where I found this picture.)

Every year, around Valentine's Day, Self Help Radio has a show with a Valentine's Day-related theme.  These have included: love, love songs, lovesickness, & what love is; girlfriends & boyfriends; jealousy, hate, & heartbreak.  This year we'll be listening to songs about sweethearts.

If you don't have a sweetheart, will this episode of Self Help Radio help you find one?  No.

If you have a sweetheart, will this episode of Self Help Radio help you keep them?  No.

This show is of no practical value when it comes to love.  It is merely a repository of songs about sweethearts.  Also, interviews with silly people.  But it is something you can share with a sweetheart - or a sweetheart-to-be.

Listen tonight from 9-11pm eastern, 8-10pm central, on 93.9 fm WLXU in Lexington, or online everywhere, even those places without love, at Lexington community radio online.  Self Help Radio is on the WLXU side.

Come, sweetheart.  There is a Valentine's show just for you.

Preface To Sweethearts, The Valentine's Day 2017 Show: Unqualified

This Valentine's Day, like most of my last fifteen or sixteen Valentine's Days, I have a sweetheart.  But that wasn't always the case.  My first twenty-one years or so, no sweethearts.  & the vast majority of the years in-between.

Since I met the woman who was ridiculous enough to marry me, I have had a de facto Valentine's sweetheart.  But I've never really bought her candy or flowers, & most certainly not on Valentine's Day.  The candy she would hate because she would think it would make her fat.  The flowers she would hate because our cats would eat them & get sick.  If Valentine's Day had a tradition of a loved one giving his sweetheart dried mango & baingan bharta, my wife would be all for it.

When I worked at a gas station, in my senior year of high school, it was a Mobil, I worked in the Mini-Mart, we had a small display at the front, a sort of cylinder really, in which rested, in a small amount of water, a few shabby roses.  I don't think I worked at the Mobil during Valentine's Day, but those overpriced flowers were very popular on weekend nights when some half-assed swain stopped in for cigarettes & gas.  Aha! he'd think. A rose! She'll like that!  I wonder if some clever woman looked at this putz & said, Gas station flowers?  Again?!?

Navigating the whole concept of a relationship was difficult for me most of my life.  I preferred to ask, which, as you know, some women find off-putting.  I'd ask to kiss them, & I'd ask if we were going out, if we were boyfriend/girlfriend, & if they preferred it to be exclusive.  That last question, by the way, was more for them than for me.  I was never the type who had offers pouring in.

Once I was in love with a girl & I remember we met during my workday after dating (or "dating") for a couple of weeks.  We wandered around the outside of the Harry Ransom Center on the University Of Texas campus.  I very uncomfortably asked her if she wanted to be my girlfriend.  She wasn't a talker & didn't exactly say no, but she also didn't say yes, which was what her silence meant.  I felt like I had gone out on a limb & it broke & I fell like Wile E. Coyote down down down until all that was left of me was a little puff of smoke.

As was the custom in those days, I made her a mixed tape, which, because she was pretty hip, was full of songs she knew & liked.  Her response to me about the tape was, "I feel like you're ruining for me songs that I have always loved."  I should've known at that point that we didn't have much of a future.

What I'm trying to say is that I am & have always been a terrible sweetheart.  I have disdained the holiday but have also never had much of an occasion to celebrate it, except these shows.  I've done Valentine's Day shows forever on Self Help Radio.  Thirteen in fourteen years, in fact.  You can see the list here.  Some of the themes have been a bit snarky - "jealousy" comes to mind - but "sweethearts" is sweet.  Just be aware the person making this radio show has a terrible track record in this particular field.

Pass On The Left, Motherfucker

These days I'm often driving from Fort Worth to Dallas to volunteer at KNON, & when I do, I take two main highways, Interstate Thirty (known as the "Tom Landry Highway" because of some sports person who wore a hat) & Interstate Seventy-Five (known as "Central Expressway" in Dallas, & also named after a terrible U.S. President).  Most of the time, I-30 is four lanes, but often it's three & in a few places, it's five.  Almost all the drivers refuse to pass on the left.  There are the people driving way too fast, weaving in & out of traffic, whom I hope one day to see in a fiery accident, the only victims of which are them & other speedy drivers who think their lives are more important than anyone else's.  They are too impatient to pass on the left, you see.

Most of the others, however, are people driving too slowly in the left lanes who, because everyone else passes on the right, don't know they're doing it wrong.  I myself drive mainly in the rightmost lane, & will in fact move into the right lane, even if I have to slow down to do so, to make some jerkwad who's driving too fast in the right lane have to pass me on the left.  This will probably get me killed one day, so it can be said I died for an idea.  A dumb, arbitrary one which will disappear once we get driverless cars, but an idea nonetheless.

Anyway, a whole rant was brewing inside of me about what the law was & how there's scientific data to back up the fact that people driving slowly on the left causes traffic jams, but someone else beat me to it (by nine years), & has links to some info.  Read her far more polite rant here.

This reminds me a friend in Kentucky who used to complain about the traffic there.  I miss the traffic in Kentucky.  Although if the average Kentucky driver had to navigate Texas highways, they'd be killed instantly.  Or they'd kill someone instantly.  Of this I am certain.

Communal Things For The Outsider To Enjoy

While I am writing this, the Super Bowl is happening.  My wife is in California.  We spoke on the phone & I mentioned that the dogwalk tonight was peaceful because everyone was at home, or at a party, & she was confused.  She didn't know it was Super Bowl Sunday.

Frankly I only know because Bill Maher mentioned it on Friday, although I'm sure with all the hype around it - mentions on Tumblr, Twitter, & Facebook - I would've sussed it out sooner than later.  It occurred to me that I probably haven't watched a Super Bowl - or even an entire ball game - since I was a kid, & even that last time I probably was too impatient to sit through the entire thing.  Whenever the Cowboys were last at the Super Bowl in the 1970s is around that time, although I have a vague memory of angering my brothers, for whom football is the closest thing they have to a hobby, by leaving to go out & play on a grey winter day.

Please don't get me wrong - I understand why people enjoy such things.  But they hold very little interest for me, be they Super Bowls or college bowls or world cups or world serieses.  I'm just not the sports kind of guy.  It goes a little further than that, of course.  I have very little interest in the halftime show, about which some people on Facebook are tonight celebrating or lambasting.  You can probably understand why I don't care for it: it's mostly people from commercial radio, not the sort of music I like to listen to.  I don't remember halftime shows being a very big deal when I was a kid, so the fact that some people tune in to watch them is a triumph of the sports/entertainment industry.

& the commercials!  Someone on Facebook said he didn't like the sports but he'd watch the commercials on the internet tomorrow.  I can barely watch commercials even if they're clever, so expensive commercials designed for a sports match seem a weird thing to want to look forward to.

By the way, I am doing something I don't really like to do.  There are people who feel they need to inject their opinion into everything.  I for the most part don't feel the need to comment on things I don't like.  Or when a musician/actor/whatever I have either a negative opinion or no opinion about, I don't feel the need to advertise that.  There are many artists who died last year, but if I didn't write about them on the blog, you may assume I didn't feel their loss was something I should note.  Again, that didn't mean they had no affect on music or movies or whatever, just that they had no affect on me.  I don't believe there's an objective good or bad out there when it comes to opinions.

Anyway, sorry about doing something I don't normally do.

But I'm doing it because I was trying to think of "shared experiences" that I do enjoy that are on or near the level of a Super Bowl.  & the only thing I could think of is awards shows.  But not all of them.

The awards shows I watch are the Emmys, the Oscars, & the Golden Globes.  In general, commercial movies tend to have a better chance of having some excellence in them than commercial music.  I don't watch the Grammys, the People's Choice Awards, or the Tonys, the latter because I pay very little attention to Broadway. The Grammys & the other one I don't watch because, like Super Bowl halftime shows, they feature commercial artists which I pay no attention to.  (You can read why I don't watch the Grammys here.)

But that's all I can think of - I watch a fair amount of television, & I see a fair amount of movies, some of which win awards.  I find awards shows nice because I like when people win, & I occasionally find the stuff the hosts/writers do to be funny.  (I don't generally like Jimmy Kimmel, for example, but I did find his Emmys Bill Cosby prank quite funny.)

Oh, & yeah, I know there are a lot more awards shows, I just thought of the ones that are bigger.  I think MTV still gives awards for the music videos they no longer play on MTV, for example, but, again, those awards are full of commercial artists winning because they are successful, not because their videos feature actual innovation of any kind.  Though I guess people who like the commercial artists would differ.  Really, it's fascinating they make music videos at all anymore.

Have I missed something?  Are there shared American experiences not based around sports or awards shows (or television) that I do take part it?  Am I not really much of an outsider after all?